I was wondering if others like to sometimes read and watch factual material online, such as documentaries or science articles, as I do. Or perhaps you find a great recipe, or a brilliant resource for learning a language or helping with home repairs?

Please post these interesting articles, videos or resources here. Maybe readers of this thread could learn something, or pick up a new interest. It's always fascinating to see what other people are interested in, I think!

Please post individual articles or videos and perhaps describe why you found it interesting, as we do other media threads such as the 'what book are you reading thread.
Please don't just post links to entire websites, or lists of links.

By showing specifics, you can post what you have read or watched today, and people here would find something new to look at each day too.

I'll start with this one:

"What Is Beyond Edge Of The Universe?" on the Space Matters youtube channel. A fascinating discussion about the origins, nature and history of the universe, in easy to understand language. As a Brit I found the lilting accent of the narrator pleasant to follow, and the subject matter is one of my favourites too. This video gave me some interesting concepts to think about, fodder for my sci-fi writing, and avenues of further research to pursue. Perhaps a little long for the non-science fan to swallow, but it is broken into chapters so easy to come back to.

Do any of you have anything interesting to teach me, please?

My prefered educational media is history/archeology/engineering related but only if they don't talk at you like you're stupid and if the narrator's voice doesn't make you pray for death. So the other day when I found Digging for Britain on I obviously watched it. I think it's a nicely done show even if it jumps around a lot for each site it shows during each episode. They aslo explain and speculate on things in a nice way that isn't icky like on some shows. It makes the urge to go on a Wikipedia binge really real!

There was a roman bath house somewhere in Wales but it was different to most because they found stuff (pipes??) that were only used in North Africa, so they were like aha it must be Septimus Severus (might be the other way round) and he was from Libya hence the stuff and the cool plaque showing construction was ordered by the emperor. Next somehwere in England they were like why are vilages abandoned? Like obviously: famine, plague, climate, war (or landlord kicking you out for the lols), but which one for this invisible village is it? Turns out it was abandonned cos volcanic ash from Iceland coated the village so it was uninhabitable and it was a volcano that they hadn't known had errupted during that period!

Oh I found 'Digging for Britain', it's a BBC2 series. So probably only available to those in the UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episo...ing-for-britain
@Noa1500 I watched some of that series today, very cool programme! I do love archaeology and history, I remember watching some of the early series of that programme and enjoying them. The only problem I have with BBC documentaries is that they all seem to begin with a five minute preamble in which all the good bits are shown, which seems unecessary to me. But if you skip right to the content, and mute it when the presenter starts 'Wow!'-ing then it's all good stuff. Very interesting about the bath house, right on Hadrian's wall! And the dye stuff they found was very significant.

Thanks for reminding me of this, I'll be watching more.

I watch plenty of stuff, ranging from Geology, psychology, engineering(mainly car related) to Astrophysics. Sometimes I'll stumble upon an article or a paper and read it for the sake of reading it and seeing if I'm able to understand what it's about.

Edit: This channel explains philosopher's works in an understandable matter.

@Johnny_Bravo Could you post individual links please? I was hoping to have a kind of repository where people could pop in and find something new to look at each day, rather than just a list of channels or sites. Post a video or article or resource that you've looked at today, just one! Then post another tomorrow.

Here's an article I read today, climate change and global time-keeping.
https://nautil.us/how-melting-ice-h...keeping-582709/



Something I never even considered could happen!

For anyone interested in vehicular/automotive engineering.

The title says it. Seems rather useless for anything aside from drones, which is stated in the video.

Very interesting, not sure he's entirely right about the breathing not being able to be improved though. The design brought to mind the Wankel Engine for some reason, I do love seeing novel engine designs. I worked mainly with diesel engine design and manufacture when I was younger, but did a lot of messing around with petrol engines also. Thanks for posting this.

Yesterday I watched this video:

I didn't know muchabout Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli so I was looking that up, and came across this image:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...lla_in_1818.jpg
What! This is actually an " Engraving depicting Caesar Augustus' now lost painting of Cleopatra VII in encaustic, which was discovered at Emperor Hadrian's Villa (near Tivoli, Italy) in 1818"? So we actually know what Cleopatra looked like? Of course I was curious so I did a bit more digging and found out that it's apocryphal...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...st_painting_of/
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/pseudodoxia/pseudo512.html

Does national geographic's aircrash investigation count as educational? Couldn't find the full episode though and I dont have time to check whether the other videos cover it as nicely.

After a month long maintenance on plane completed that morning by 3rd party, plane to return to home base with 3 pilots and 3 maintenance engineers who did not perform work on this plane. The pilots had difficulty steering almost immediately after take off and experienced sudden drop through the sky. They'd assumed the problem was caused by the new computers on board, so they asked 1 maintenance guy to confirm. He also added that the cables and pulley system for the ailerons(??) was completely replaced. To check what was happening the pilots decided that the maintenance guy needed to do a visual check: which direction (up or down) were the ailerons going in when the pilots steered the plane in a particular direction? To their horror they realised that they were installed the wrong way round: which meant that steering left made the plane go right instead of left and vice versa. They also found something was wrong the thing that's like a gearshift (I missed the word for it) because they were like we're supposed to be on 2 normally but somehow only 5 works. Eveyone was conviced that the plane need to be ditched and were essentially prepared to not survive, and air control called in 2 fighter planes to assisst them getting to sea/ help them find alternatives. As the storm only kept getting worse and it was clear that diching at sea would actually be fatal, the fighter pilots suggested a military airport that had better weather conditions and to try landing their. In the end it worked but it took like 3 or 4 attempts for a safe landing. Overall they flew for 2 hours nearly all of which was trying to find a way to land or ditch.

What did the investigators learn?
1. 3rd party maintenance crews aren't necessarily as strict about following all the rules and checks that they need to do.
2. Sometimes the instuctions given to the crews are very confusing even to the people who know what they're doing.
3. Not all crew members are highly experienced and not necessarily assigned to work on parts/areas/sections equal to their experience.
4. The amount of pressure (Gs) that the plane went through was far higher than normal as the surface of the plane was all bumpy/dentend. Any higher and the plane would've torn apart.
5. Not all updates/safety fixes are applied equally around the world. Turns out the gear shify thing problem had happened on many of the same plane outside the USA because apparently it was not applied universally which is actually crazy. Apparently that's was fixed after this case was investigated.

@Noa1500 Absolutely! Very interesting, I hadn't heard about this one. But it turns out that u/Admiral_Cloudberg covered this flight on their Medium site, which is an interesting analysis:
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com...88-88878e2eb3c4

Amazing that the pilots managed to get the plane in, I always find accounts of these type of events fascinating, having worked for many years in Aircraft manufacture. There are many clips from that series on youtube, going to look at some more for sure!

Thanks for posting this!

I was watching some house show on HGTV and the designer went to a super fancy Moroccan tile and architectual pieces store. They showed an archway that absolutely brilliant and supposedly 500 years old, and it reminded me more of the arches requently seen in Indian architecture. [small]I do know that there are various architectural styles from India but I don't know their names yet!/small]. So I was like:

If Gothic architecture is based on Islamic architecture, is Indian architecture:
a) inspired by Islamic architecture?
b) the inspiration for Islamic architecture?
c) something else (because I know nothing)?

Turns out its A and C. Kind of.

Indian architecture has a bunch of branches across different eras and regions, which makes sense because thats how time, civilisation and empires work. Anyway, what we usually think of is called Indo-Islamic architecture which first began around the 11th and 12th centuries when Islam began to spread further. Over time the two styles merged and began to do their own thing and developed into the iconic sites like the Taj Mahal that we see appearing around the 16th and later centuries.

I'm going back to my search spiral because I barely know anything about these two styles I finally have some time to obsess
I'll be back eventually to summarise what I find out and add sources

Well, for me, it'd be archives of How It's Made. Currently, I'm looking at the makings of various movie magic.

Ooh, very interesting @G-Mon ! Watching now, I love seeing how this is done! Thank you for posting.

Thank you all for your posts, from what you have all led me to I've had some interesting reading and vieweing over the last few weeks!

Today I was watching this- corium under reactor #4, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

That place makes me shudder!
Here's a bit of detail about corium:
https://science.howstuffworks.com/c...phants-foot.htm

Continents and supercontinents!


I always love to imagine what the places I visit and inhabit would have looked like throughout the ages, so this one was fantastic viewing for me. Combined with a love of fossils and geology...

Found some more info about some of the topics discussed:

1.2 billion year old fossils!
https://www.scottishgeologytrust.or.../stromatolites/

Ancient supercontinents:
https://www.worldatlas.com/geograph...continents.html

Future supercontinents:
https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...ke-one-of-these

Missed the Auroras, but if the weather is right, the Nova will do.

@Johnny_Bravo Brilliant, thanks for posting- clear instructions on how to see this nova. I was watching Betelgeuse a few years ago when it brightened, but nothing happened there! So this will be cool to see. Nice info in that video on exoplanets too, very interesting. Those people also have a great website, and you can sub to their newsletter. They have a good article on novas here:
https://www.universetoday.com/131577/what-is-a-nova/
And one about this particular nova, T Coronae Borealis:
https://www.universetoday.com/16545...is-pop-in-2024/

Is it really educational if the video was an investigation into a meme ? The guy was really dedicated to his search for its origins. For most of us a meme is a meme- it jsut appears one day, we learn when to use it as it gets more popular, and then it fades into obscurity (some more quickly than others). Some memes have obvious origins/ sources, and others are a lot more mysterious. Like where did it come from? I think its interesting, kind of in the same way that language and popculture are. It changes so quickly yet not very much at the same time.

Also watched a video where they were explaining how live performances in music have changed. Musicians that were active for example in the 80s and 90s vs those starting more recently don't perform their live shows the same way which changes the experience. Older artists apparently don't use any extra backing or whatever they called it. They just show up and do their show, which is why it always sounds different but also more real. This is very different to how newer artists perform. Their shows are nearly identical to their studio album because they have it and vairous other verions of it playing in the backing so that the band and singer can always sound exactly the same and be "perfect". This is what ruins the vibe for some people because that perfection feels fake- live shows should be different experience to a studio album. I aree with that sentiment, something feels wrong in the newer live shows but I couldn't name it I'd stick the link in but I can't find it right now.

Absolutely, this is a great video! The dancing baby is in Sims 2 as Baby New Year (I remember it from Ally McBeal too ) and there's that melon cat which is part of a tattoo on an outfit. I don't think the jazz trumpet made it in though.

Such an interesting video, great detective work! Very interesting to see how he analysed the metadata and traced the source of this gif. It did get a bit stalkerish at one point, but I think her family would be pleased that Cathy has become such a legend.
Thanks for posting the link!


Yes, I've noticed this too. The artistes I was watching live when I was younger were all live bands, very little of what you heard was not created in real time by the musicians on the stage. Indeed, many artistes wrote so that their music could be re-created by them live. One example is Rush (my favourites) who wrote all of their early music with a view to how they were going to perform it. It wasn't until midi switching became more reliable that they were able to write without regard for live performance, because once they could reliably trigger samples, they could do this live. Every sound you heard in a Rush performance, right up until their last gig, was either played by one of the band live, or triggered by one of the members hitting a switch with feet, hands or stick.
Examples- Closer to the Heart, written in 1977 performed in '81-the bell break at ~1.11 was written so that Lerxst could switch from acoustic to electric guitar onstage:

And this video, from 2011- the members trigger samples, for example the female vocals in the first song:

I am an avid collector of bootleg recordings for a few artistes, Rush amongst them, and the fun of hearing these performances is to hear how the songs are changed on each performance. Tempo, vocal differences, a new arrangement- it was always very exciting going to a live gig to hear a new version of your favourite songs. And just as cool finding recordings of them years later, where the live track sounds so different, whilst remaining true to the original.
A huge contrast to some live performers. This video may have been the one you saw- an analysis of two performances at Glastonbury:

Of course, Dua Lipa is aiming to give a completely different experience to the one my favourite old rock groups were. It was more about the music itself in the past, whereas now the stage production and artiste's image seems to be where it's at.

I recently saw a live gig with Sophie Ellis Bextor- she sang live and managed to dance just as energetically as Dua Lipa, but her voice was totally upfront and untuned. I couldn't find a video of the gig I attended, but here is one from earlier this year, where she is not as energetic as she was when I saw her last week!

Watching a gig with live musicians and a vocalist, I'm not really thinking about if the performance sounds like the original, or if the singer is sharp or flat- I'm watching the whole thing, hearing each musician create something unique for me at that moment. I like to hear how the singer's voice has changed as they have aged, how the guitarist has changed the effects and techniques they use, how the drummer plays a different fill. Mistakes and all, that's the whole point of a live performance, isn't it?

@simsample you found the video I was looking for! It's the 2nd to last one

So the other day I came across scleral lenses and thought what's that? I already know about regular soft contact lenses and a bit about hard lenses (but never used them so like how much firmer are they?) and how they work. Anyway, for people with keratoconus (steep/ irregular corneas) there is a solution(ish) and that's sceleral lenses which are like hard lenses but much larger and require fitting from an eye doctor and much more maintenance and skill to use. I don't remember if this source mentioned it, but some people layer regular contact lenses with scleral lenses. I didnt think that was possible because of how the scleral lenses work in the first place- like you need to fill them with the liquid so they're basically suctioned to your eye so I'm not really sure how that works with lenses under that too? Maybe its just people doing things that aren't necessarily okayed by their doc?

Very interesting @Noa1500 The wikipedia article suggests that they can be used for reasons other than vision correction:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scleral_lens

This article is useful too:
https://www.optometrists.org/genera...scleral-lenses/

I knew nothing about contact lenses, so learned something reading about this! I do like my eyeglasses.

I was watching these videos, restoring a painting which was badly damaged. Like photoshop, the analog version!

Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDVcgpSwnyg

Part 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWCBNL-iu5s

I visit LiveScience on a regular basis to stay on top of science news, and lately I've been using Coursera to learn more IT-adjacent stuff. I've had to take over my organisation's website and don't know a thing about CSS, etc.

Could you give us a link of a specific article you like please, @smellincoffee ? The purple writing in the first post points to what would be good to have.

Sure! This is one interesting article from LiveScience called "Why Did Homo sapiens outlast all the other human species ", which is mostly speculation on why other species of Homo died out and we didn't.

Thank you! Reading now, looks interesting!